


comfortably numb

by kashxy



Category: Spider-Man: Homecoming
Genre: Bisexual Peter Parker, Drug Abuse, Euphoria Inspired, Graphic Depictions of Drug Use, M/M, Majorly Out of Character, Minor Relationships, OOC, Other, Parent Tony Stark, Peter Parker is Not Innocent, Sexual Themes, Substance Abuse, Teen Angst, Teen Romance, Teen Sexual Encounters, Teen drug use, Tony Stark is Peter’s Biological Father, Underage Drinking, Underage Sex, alternative universe, no powers au, parkner
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2020-08-10 18:44:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 9
Words: 20,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20140207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kashxy/pseuds/kashxy
Summary: He’s seventeen and he’s been in rehab three times already.Maybe the thought should scare him as much as going longer than a couple days without molly does, but it doesn’t.





	1. burn it to the fucking ground

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> heavily inspired by the HBO show ‘euphoria’ starring Zendaya.

**_four months earlier _ **

It’s become something of a tradition now, one Peter’s not even sure his dad recognises. Because, when they end up stuck in line at a glittering fast food restaurant on 74th street at ten in the morning, Tony looks somewhat confused. Not disorientated. Just...lost. 

Burger King. For when shit’s gone beyond fucked up. That’s what Peter supposes he can class today as - _‘beyond fucked up’_. 

He’s still in his hospital gown, clutching the blue band that adorns his wrist with his opposite fingers like it’s the same lifeline that forced his lungs to start working again only a week earlier. It’s a sure tell sign that he’s been in the hospital, but he can’t bring himself to claw it off, even as it itches against his pulse point. It kinda helps him forget the fact that he hasn’t had cocaine in over two weeks. 

He tries to focus on the fact that Tony’s chewing his lip instead, something his dad had adopted ever since Peter first ended up in hospital, rather than the itch of the pack of marlboros in the side of his boxers. 

“Pete, I-”

”Hello, and welcome to Burger King, how may I help you?” 

Tony jolts, eyes flicking up the woman leaning slightly out of her window at them. Her hair swings as she smiles back hopefully, ignoring Peter completely. 

He tries to ignore the small bruise on the inside of her left arm when she reaches for the money, tries to gnaw down at the the desire he has of experiencing heroin again. He hadn’t done it often before, so he supposes it’d be a fantastic choice for his first trip after his discharge. 

He dismisses the thought immediately. He’d never really liked sticking needles in his arm - something about them just made his skin crawl - so he’d stick to snorting shit up his nose and seeing how many pills he could fit in his throat before he choked.

_Six in a night. That’s his record. _

The car starts moving again, so slowly that Peter catches sight of a woman across the street smoking. His lungs ache under the weight of denying them a cigarette in so long, but it’s not like he can pull one out and light up _here_, still wearing his hospital gown and discharge band. That would just be weird. 

“I got you a cheeseburger. Thought you might like it.”

Ah. A cheeseburger. Food for when shit’s gone _beyond_, beyond fucked up; Peter must understand, for he curls into himself and nods minutely, throat tight. Cheeseburgers only come when they _really_ need to talk. 

He thinks of Morgan, how she’d been the one to adopt the cheeseburger tradition in the first place. The night Peter’s first withdrawal symptoms started showing, she made Tony drive all the way to this same Burger King, made him buy three cheeseburgers only for Peter to eat them all in twenty minutes through frenzied sobs and a killer stomach ache.

Morgan was so _clean_, like how she’d huddle over a book, eyes skimming the pages as quick as Peter’s used to, how she used to bound into Peter’s room in a dress four sizes too big for her and one heel on the wrong foot. He remembers reading with both his dad and his sister, remembers how happy he’d been without drugs clogging up his veins. How clean _he’d_ been. 

It’s kind of embarrassing how much he relies on foreign shit to keep him happy these days. He remembers throwing a glass photo frame at Tony, holding a shard between his fist so hard it broke the skin. He remembers Morgan’s gasp when he’d slid down the wall and cried so hard he’d vomited all over himself. 

After all he’s put them through, he would have thought that _this_ would be it. That almost fucking _dying_ would be the breaking point. 

It must not be, because he still watches the two teenage girls smoking weed near a dumpster when he reclines slightly in his seat, eyes still trained to notice the blazed pupils of someone crossing the road just behind them. Despite his life nearly ending, he still itches for the high as much as he did when he’d first started. 

The thought both infuriates and entices him. He’s ready to stop, but he’s not quite ready to give it all up. 

The food’s ready quickly, for it’s ten A.M. on a Sunday and nobody else has just come out of a overdose induced coma ready to eat cheeseburgers for breakfast. It’s better than not eating at all, Peter figures. 

He supposes he should be worrying about the fact that he’s sixteen and he’d literally almost _died_ in a hazy overdose of meth, but he’s more focused on the fact that his local drug dealer moved out of town a week before Peter’s overdose and now he has no way of getting more drugs ready for party season in two weeks.

_(‘Moved out of town’, they said; as if Peter didn’t know how much trouble Fez had been in.) _

Party season. A summer of drugs, drink, and sex, one that teenagers all over town have been excitedly awaiting since school started back again. One Peter doesn’t find particular enticing.

Okay, well, he enjoys the first two. He can’t really tell with the third one. 

“Morgan misses you.” 

_Morgan_. 

For the first time since he woke up in the hospital with nobody by his side, Peter feels upset. Not like a _‘hey, I got a bad grade on my assignment’_ upset. More like a _‘my little sister saw me unconscious choking on my own vomit and she’s only twelve’ _kind of upset. 

“She wanted to come visit. I couldn’t let her.” 

Peter makes a sound, pressing his lips tighter together. Of course he hadn’t wanted her to visit. Peter had been a mess, _is_ a mess. Morgan didn’t need to be further traumatised by her older brother’s shitty life decisions.

“She’s learning how to make cheeseburgers.” 

At that, Peter smiles weakly, and looks down at the burger on his lap. Tony’s still driving, like he can’t bear to talk with Peter without something else occupying his attention, so he gently picks it up and nibbles at it. It tastes like seasoned cardboard, but perfect all the same. 

“So you can have them on your sad days.” Tony adds, hands gripping the steering wheel just slightly too tight. “That’s what she said, at least.” 

“There’ll be a lot of them,” Peter mumbles, the air in the car too warm and stuffy all of a sudden, sour with a hint of salt water and body odour. 

It’s suffocating, and his fingers are moving to open the window before he can blink, having already memorised the insides of this car four times over in case he’d gotten kidnapped in the exact same car his dad possessed. Obsessive, perhaps. That was the point. 

He pushes on the button, and it clicks, but doesn’t open. Peter can’t even stifle the scoff he makes - of course Tony child locked it. _Of course_ that’s what they think.

He pulls at a thread of the oversized jacket around his torso and sighs. He supposes his dad just doesn’t _get_ it. He hadn’t been _trying_ to kill himself. At least, he doesn’t think he was. 

Teenagers overdose all the time. Granted, most of them are in the death column in the local newspaper, but Peter was different. He had limits. 

Maybe he just kinda forgot those limits when he took so much meth he passed out and woke up in a hospital with an IV tube in his arm. Maybe. 

The knowledge that nobody will trust him ever again only makes him feel smaller, younger, and he curls into his legs, looking warily at his dad. 

“Dad, I-” 

“Will you just try?” Tony says, his voice thick, like there’s something blocking his airway. “Please? For Morgan? For me?”

Peter stares at him for a little longer until his dad’s eyes flick back to meet his and he looks away quickly, cheeks flushed. Pulling his knees closer to his chest, he rests his face on the backs of his hand, watching the shitty, rundown town drive by. He hates this town, and everything it holds, but he can’t bring himself to try to leave. 

“She can’t watch you kill yourself. I can’t-”

His dad breaks off, breath laboured and hitched. Peter’s too much of a coward to look over and face reality, so he pushes his face further downward and bites his lip. 

It’s his fault. He knows that, and he feels sickly guilty about it, but he can’t stop himself when he pulls the pack of cigarettes out of his boxers and lights one in the same minute. 

It looks selfish. It looks, quite frankly, disrespectful, and damn right rude. With the windows down, killing himself all over again with tobacco instead of cocaine this time, when he’s still in his hospital gown, still recovering from a coma. He’s sick in the head, and he’s too far gone to change. 

Perhaps if his lungs weren’t killing him so much under the weight of knowing he’s destroyed his family’s lives, he’d be able to go longer than a couple days without tobacco. When he thinks of Morgan’s innocent face and the hatred his dad had worn, he takes a long drag and tries to stop the tears threatening at his eyes. Coward tears, he supposes. 

“Peter, don’t do that here.” 

He mumbles something unintelligible, ignoring the way Tony scoffs and raises his eyebrow. He pulls the cigarette from Peter’s mouth, takes a drag from it, and throws it out of the now open window. 

It’s completely not Peter’s fault that he immediately thinks of jumping out the door.

“I wasn’t finished.” 

“I don’t care whether you were finished, Peter!” His dad yells, knuckles white against the steering wheel. “You - fuck - you nearly fucking _died_, Peter. Do you realise that?” 

Of course he knows that. Hearing it said out loud doesn’t make it any easier. 

“Because it seems like you don’t. I know you think this is all some game, but you were so close-”

Peter bites down on his teeth, grinding them together like he used to do when he woke up from a nightmare. He kinda hopes that’s what this all is. Some big, fucked up nightmare. 

“We found a new centre. It’s supposed to be better.”

A new centre. Of course. Rehabilitation had never stuck with Peter, but he was stupid for thinking he could get out of a near death experience without consequences. 

And yeah, he thinks, he’s sixteen and he’s been in rehab three times and none of them have worked before, so why should he give this one a try? 

His dad puts a hand on his knee gingerly, like he’s touching possessed glass that might shatter and stab him in the eye at any given moment. The stench of whiskey and smoke is almost overpowering, and Peter wants to know just how many cheeseburgers his little sister has eaten since he went into hospital. 

_Oh yeah. That’s why. _

“More familiar, we can visit you if you want - If you’re doing well. It’s a four week course, it’s going to be really hard. They think you should just go cold turkey.” 

It’s raining outside, and when they pull up to a stop sign, there’s a cat wandering the sidewalk, soaked through and utterly _miserable_. Centres do that to Peter, make him a miserable, incoherent mess until he comes home and passes a drug test only to go out and take as much shit as he can without passing out. He can’t do that anymore, because Fez is ‘_out of town_’, and everyone he knows is trying to get clean, and- 

And _fuck_, Peter thinks, because his dad has _no idea_ how bad his last centre had been. It had been stupid easy to get drugs in there when half the staff were too busy playing poker to care, anyway. He’d done more cocaine in that centre than on the outside. Maybe that was the whole reason he overdosed in the first place, but everyone seems to be insistent it was his own fault. Maybe it was. 

“You leave next week. Four weeks. I really need you to try, Peter.” 

A week left of school. A week to find another dealer before he literally goes insane. A week to smoke as much weed as he possibly can without his lungs failing him. Easy. 

When Peter looks down, he’s still in a hospital gown and discharge bracelet, and he outright groans. Because, he could have kinda pretended this was a nightmare. That he hadn’t really just woken up from a coma, that he hadn’t just nearly _died_. Maybe the thought should scare him more than not finding a new dealer does, but it doesn’t, and that’s terrifying in its own. 

They pull into a small library parking lot, the only place in this god forsaken town not tainted in shitty graffiti. Morgan’s sat on the curb, scraped knees pulled in taut to her chest as her eyes skim rapidly across the page, and Peter’s breath hitches. He’s _ruined_ her. 

Peter’s out of the car before it’s even stopped, running towards his sister with his arms outstretched before Tony can spit out the words to scold him for it. Morgan looks just the same as when he left, and completely different all in one. It’s disgusting, and Peter knows full well that it’s all his fault. 

“Morg!” He grins, ignoring the fact that he’s literally only wearing a t-shirt three sizes too big and a hospital gown with an odd stain down the middle. There’s a few people around who notice him, but he doesn’t really care. 

It’s kind of terrifying the way Morgan jolts up quickly, her body awkwardly stiff and confused. There’s a smile on her face, but it’s forced and tight, and Peter pulls her into his arms, gentle and kind. 

“I missed you.” 

Morgan doesn’t answer, but she tightens her arms around his waist. He can vaguely hear the eighties pun rock spilling from her discarded earphones, some red pair their dad had gotten them both so that they didn’t fight. His were blue; at least, he thinks they were. They were lost somewhere in his shit tip of a bedroom, mingling somewhere with other broken, lost pairs that he’d never get back. He didn’t really need them anyway, rarely ever used his phone, so he didn’t mind that much. It was just another minor inconvenience to add to his shitty life at this point. 

“We’ve got cheeseburgers.” His dad calls, voice dripping with artificial cheeriness. He’s trying, for Morgan. They both are. 

It seems Morgan’s familiar with their tradition, because she pulls back with glassy eyes and a forlorn expression. She nods, tiny and shy, and leaves Peter alone on the sidewalk. 

The air’s cold, suffocating in an almost pathetic way. His fingertips itch for the pack of cigarettes, but he left them in the car and, besides, he doesn’t need another thing persuading Morgan to start killing herself like he is. 

“Peter. Come on.” Tony’s voice is gentle now, kind and quiet.

His sister’s softly chattering away when he gets back into the car, a quiet distraction against the elephant in the room. It’s uncomfortable, but Peter watches her smile into her cheeseburger in the rear view mirror and thinks, okay. Maybe it _was_ all just some fucked up nightmare. 

When they pull into the driveway, house the exact same as it was when Peter left it, he takes the opportunity to double check just _how_ thorough Tony’s been this time. 

There’s a small plant just inside the house, next to a small pin board full of old achievements and notices. It hasn’t been used in at least six months, and the plant never gets watered anyway, so it’s easy enough to hide shit in it. 

He digs into the soil with his fingertips, side eyeing the doorway warily, and pulls out a small, crinkly bag. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t hoping it was full. 

True to his (albeit, disappointing) thoughts, the bag’s empty, and so is every one after that that he pulls out. Tony must have reburied them when he came back and inevitably started searching for them again. Taunting, teasing. 

Well, there it is. The last thing he has to look forward to, shocked up and lost in the shitty reality that, yeah, okay. 

Not a nightmare. 


	2. & therein lies the catch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> not edited. yet. :)

“Seriously, Peter? Again?” 

Ned Leeds was a simple guy. He got the drugs, he sold the drugs. It was one of the reasons Peter liked him so much - he wasn’t complicated like every other crackhead he’d met. He needed the simple, quick sale almost as much as he needed the drugs. 

What he _didn’t_ need was Ned questioning his choices every single fucking deal. 

“Come on, man, get off my dick.” 

Ned scoffs, leading him through the archway to the back room of his apartment. The shingles clang together as Peter moves through them, shaking off the flyaway drapes. 

The archway opens into a small room, suffocating and warm despite the vent above the cabinet of medication. A computer stands lit up to his right, covered in _Star Wars_ stickers, showing a clear view of some bitcoin website Ned dabbled in. 

That was the other thing Peter liked about Ned. He was _smart_. Smarter than anyone really knew, for he could hack into a mainframe software in six minutes and mess the whole network up in half the time. 

“God bless anyone who fucks with you, mate.” Peter laughs, leaning forward to inspect the screen further.

Multiple obscene messages were scattered around the monitor, and a video was playing mutely, right in the middle of the screen. Some homemade hardcore porn video is playing, out there for everyone to see, and Peter raises an eyebrow. He didn’t ever want to get on Ned’s bad side. 

“I don’t think you should be doing this anymore, Pete. You’re gonna die, mate.” 

“How much molly you got left?” He says, ignoring the passing comment. “I need some coke, too. Runnin’ out.” 

Despite how fond he is of Ned Leeds, the boy had a serious deal with getting on his dick about _everything_. Whether it was relationships, drugs, his home life, Ned wanted to know it all. It was more annoying than anything, but he couldn’t afford to fall out with _another_ dealer. 

“I ain’t got much, man.” He sighed, a twang of an unfamiliar accent dripping in his voice. “Ain’t making as much money as I used to, you know?” 

Peter doesn’t know, but he nods and hums anyway. He’s more interested in searching the drawers against the wall for his next high to pay attention to Ned’s mindless babbling. 

“How’s Betty?” 

Ned makes a noise, flopping down into the chair near his computer. There’s now a reading of code on it, something Peter doesn’t understand, but has Ned groaning and rapidly clicking away at the keyboard underneath the screen. 

“She’s good. Says she misses you.” 

Peter laughs, pulling out a couple bags of cocaine in his right hand. He shoved them into his pocket and keeps looking. Maybe Ned notices, but he doesn’t say anything; he was cool like that. 

“Still on the cocaine?” 

“Nah,” Ned says, and there’s a frown on his face now. “Couldn’t let her kill herself. She’s sixty days clean now, you know.” 

Peter nods because, this time, he _does_ kinda know. 

“And no, she ain’t bullshitting. She’s doing really well, Peter. You should try, too.” 

Okay. Maybe he _doesn’t_ know. 

“That’s good.” He trails off, staring down at the small bag of MDMA pills in his palm. “That’s...good.” 

Shaking his head, he pockets the bags, quickly turning on his heel towards the concealed archway behind him. Ned makes a noise behind him, but he’s too preoccupied in the computer to follow him.

“You’re gonna have to pay for that, man!” 

“You love me.” Peter calls back, grinning as he thumbs the pills in his jacket pocket. Despite not paying for it in anything but favours and affection, he doesn’t want Ned’s drugs going anywhere without the larger boy’s knowledge. 

Ned doesn’t live far from here, in some rundown, shitty apartment, but he’s far enough that by the time Peter walks home, he’s absolutely soaked. The rain comes down hard here, and he’d quickly learnt not to trust the weather at the beginning of the day. 

It’s seven A.M. on a Tuesday, and he should probably be getting ready for school, but he’s way too focused on the possibility of crushing a small line of coke and using it to get through this wretched day to care about something as minor as passing high school. Morgan was the smart one - always had been. She could carry the Stark legacy right through the door into university. 

The door opens into a small alleyway, bare except for a few lonely pairs of shoes, and then into a long corridor down the middle of their bungalow complex. 

They’d moved about two months after Peter’s overdose, unable to stay in a house so suffocated with horrific memories. The new bungalow was nice, he supposed, but he was either out, or smoking in his room, so he never really got the chance to feel it properly. 

His room is right at the end of the long, carpeted corridor, just a small archway, his bed in full view even from the front door. His dad had ripped the door right off of its hinges when he’d caught him smoking weed in there a couple weeks back, and he refused to replace it. Whatever. It was just a minor obstacle he had in the way of getting high. 

Peter didn’t really _want_ to be sneaking around, going behind his dad’s back to do the exact thing that put him in hospital four months ago. At the end of the day, he really didn’t _want_ to be stuck in a cycle of drug addiction, but here they are. 

He’d tried. Harder than anyone had given him credit for. He’d sat through meeting after meeting in the neurotics anonymous group, got his sheet ticked off halfway until he caught up with Flash and took so much molly he thought the world was flat and he was inevitably dead. He’d barely scraped the barrel of an overdose then, and the fact had scared him enough to stay clean for three whole weeks. 

He didn’t really like Flash, per say, but the kid had good links, and he was sensible. Sure, he was a fucking dickhead, but he’d saved Peter’s ass when they wandered onto a live train track a couple months ago in the dead of night, and for that, he was grateful. Not grateful enough to show it, but grateful all the same. 

“Peter? You home?” 

“Yeah, dad!” He called back, pulling off his drenched sweater. Water droplets fell from his curly hair, into his eyes and onto the carpet beneath him: the only thing tainting this stupidly clean, dry house. 

Throwing the keys onto the table in the living room, he made his way down the corridor, stopping only for a moment outside Morgan’s door. It was tightly shut, but he could still hear whatever Netflix show it was that she was watching, silent except for the white noise of the characters’ voices. Peter sighed. He missed her. 

“Peter,” he carries on walking, stopping only when he got to his arch: he didn’t need this starting outside Morgan’s room. “Look at me.” 

He warily raises his eyes, taking note of his father’s tight jaw and slanted eyes. He looked pissed. 

The room seems to be spinning, and not because he’s high this time. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d took his anti anxiety medication, whether he’d flushed them or not. He seemed to be losing a lot of his memories recently, and they slipped away as easily as he slept under coke. 

“Are you high?” 

_This again._

“No, dad, I’m not high.” He mumbles, walking further into his room. It smells of smoke and sweat, because he can’t bring himself to reach above his drawer and open the top window. It’s his own fault, but it doesn’t make the stench any less inconveniencing or unbearable. 

When he turns to face the arch, his dad is holding out a small cup, and he groans, unable to stop his hands fisting into his hair on instinct. 

“I need you to take this-”

”I just peed!” He says, throwing his hands out: drug tests were the bitch of his existence. 

Okay, sure, it’s completely his fault that his dad doesn’t trust him, but it doesn’t stop it being _really_ fucking annoying. 

Tony holds the cup out further, expression unwavering. 

_Shit_. 

He needs to find a way to pass this stupid fucking test, and _quick_. Time isn’t really on his side, so it’s not like he can wait for water and niracin to flush his system out. He settles on the easiest, most humiliating option, and sighs, tired and pissed off. He doesn’t really have a right to be, since it’s his own fault Tony’s so paranoid on testing him, but it pisses him off nonetheless. 

If there’s one thing he’s grateful for, it’s his links in this small town. Betty’s clean, if Ned’s telling the truth, and she lives only five minutes down the road. It’s a shitty, lowlife thing to do, but hey. He’s desperate. 

“I’m not on drugs.” He continues, but the look on Tony’s face tells him he’s fucked to get out of it. “Okay. Okay.” 

“Thank you.” His dad says, voice tired and stretched. He sounds like he’s just won a battle with a dragon, something so impossible, he almost couldn’t believe it. Peter’s co-operation rivalled that at the moment - impossible. 

He walks past Tony, never looking at him, and he doesn’t miss the fall of his dad’s shoulders: he could plague himself with guilt later - right now, he’s got one thing on his mind, and it’s finding a way to pass this bullshit test. Easy enough. 

“Where are you going?” His dad’s voice shouts down the bungalow when Peter begins to pull on his battered converses, not even bothering to lace them up. 

“For a run. You want me to pee, don’t you?” 

It’s a gamble. A very big fucking gamble, he’ll give himself that, but Tony nods, defeated, and waves a hand to let him go. 

The guilt finally does flood through him when he watches his dad walk into the kitchen, somewhere he can’t see from here, and opens the fridge. Peter knows full well what he’s getting to drink, and he bites down on his lips. He’s _ruining_ this already shattered household, and he’s got no one to blame but himself. 

He shakes it off, pulling on the same wet sweater he’d only just taken off. It sticks to his skin, but the itchy feeling of damp fabric is minor at the back of his mind right now. Right now, he needs to get to Betty’s, and _quick_. 

He kinda shot himself in the foot when he told his dad he was going for a run, so the bike at the side of his house is out of the question. Instead, he turns right and starts jogging down the street, not bothering to check for oncoming cars. It wasn’t really a priority right now. 

As he jogs, he thinks of how stupid this whole fucking thing is. He’s going back to school today, for the first time in a long time, and he’s running down a street at seven forty five in the morning to beg his non crackhead friend to piss for him. It’s fucked, and he should probably feel more embarrassed than he actually does. 

Honestly, he thought the rehab program he’d had a few months ago would have worked. He’d seen shit in there he’d never seen before; a woman, paralysed and brain dead after a overdose, a man’s whose nostrils blurred together into one, gaping hole, because he’d snorted too much cocaine that he’d blown his nose out. It had scared Peter enough that he’d promised with tears flowing down his cheeks in therapy that he’d never touch cocaine again. 

Oh, how it had bitten him in the ass once again. 

Betty lived in the posh neighbourhood, a row of white picket fenced, three story houses, dotted in perfect symmetry around a circular podium holding a statued waterfall. Everything in it was perfect, symmetrical, clean; Peter belonged here less than anything. 

Betty’s house in particular was spotless, but he’d been involved in too many arguments within its four walks that he knew how imperfect her family was. Her dad had left when she was thirteen, and the space had never been filled outside of bottles of wine and one night stands.

They’d been friends since childhood, but they’d grown apart as the years went on. Peter had gotten involved with the wrong crowd, and Betty had been in and out of the counsellors office like clockwork. They worked well together until they didn’t, and Peter regretted it more than ever. 

“Peter?” 

In the few months that Peter hadn’t seen Betty, she’d changed a lot. Her hair, which used to smell like weed and look similar to a birds nest, was tied into a sleek ponytail, flyaways framing her strong jaw. Whatever had happened in those months had obviously done her the world of good, for her skin was clearer than Peter had ever seen it, and her cheekbones weren’t so scarily defined. She looked beautiful, and healthy. 

“Hey, Betty, I, uh-” Oh right. He was on a time limit. “I need a favour.” 

Without asking, he pushes through the door, the large hallway welcoming him with sparkling lights and polished floorboards. It’s not like Betty isn’t used to his behaviour, so he doesn’t stress it too much. 

“I need you to pee in this.” 

He’d never been good at dodging the point, softening the blow, so he’d been expecting Betty’s shocked face. Of all the years they’d known each other, she was still as trustworthy as she had been back in kindergarten when she’d returned his favourite pen after a day. She was an angel. 

“Pete? Again?” 

“Please?” He whispers, having been in this situation far too many times to be ashamed. 

Betty scoffs, and shuffles on her feet before grabbing the cup from Peter’s outstretched hand. Her nails scrape his skin, and he knows it was purposeful. 

“I can’t keep doing this. You owe me.” 

Peter sighs, and looks to the floor. He owes a lot of people.

It’s still raining outside, and he’s dripping on her floor, so he makes a move to stand by the doorway again. He doesn’t belong in this house, anyway. 

“I know. Thank you.” 


	3. mt. everest

Tony’s waiting for him when he gets home. He always is. 

Peter had continued on his walk for a while after Betty had finished, doing whatever he could to stay out of the house for as long as possible. If that involved getting more drugs, what about it? 

He’s wearing that judgemental look that Peter hates, that shit eating glare that accuses Peter of everything and nothing all at once. Morgan’s up, too, out of her room for the first time in a while. She’s curled on the sofa, calm and still, with one eye on the hallway. 

Peter walks straight past his dad, ignoring the offhanded comment he makes about there being no drugs in this house. It makes him sick, although he knows he’s absolutely no one to blame but himself. 

His room still stinks, suffocating and heavy on his lungs when he sinks himself onto the bed, pulling another cigarette out of his nearly empty packet. He lights it, lets it burn for a minute, before he pulls it to his face and takes a long drag of it. His lungs hurt, but he ignores it. 

Sometimes, if he concentrates hard enough, he can hear Morgan laughing slightly, his dad saying something in his happily loud, carefree voice. If he closes his eyes, he can almost imagine he’s with them - having fun, enjoying life, not focusing on the cup of piss in his hoodie pocket and the cigarette hanging loosely from his mouth. 

He wonders what would happen if he swallowed the cigarette. Whether, if he chewed enough, his lungs would shatter under the tar of his disappointment, and he’d die in peace, under a cloud of smoke and a suffocating stench of death. 

He takes a deep breath and snuffs the half burnt cigarette out. His head’s starting to hurt. 

“Dad!” He yells, opening his door to a wave of clean air and spaghetti bolognese. “I need to piss!” 

His dad sighs, loud enough for Peter to hear from here, and meets him in the hallway, just outside of the kitchen. 

“Peter, please. Your sister’s here.” 

He bites back the sarcastic comment that lingers on his tongue, and just nods solemnly instead.

“Can I go to a party tonight?” 

Tony leads him into the bathroom, holding the door for him while he trundles in after him. He stuffs his hands into his pockets, concealing the small cup behind a solemn face and his fists. 

“That depends on your results.” 

Peter nods, no energy left to scoff. Betty had invited him to the party she was getting ready for when he turned up, and he was in two minds of whether to go. On the one hand, it gave him the opportunity to get out rekindle every ‘friendship’ he’d lost in his time at rehab. He’d lost MJ a week before he’d overdosed. Flash, a couple days after he came back from the centre. He’d had a tough time ever since, but the exhaustion permanently injected into his veins paralysed him in bed until he could barely breathe. 

On the other hand, he really fucking misses Morgan. And Tony, of course, but him and his father had never had the best relationship. He didn’t want to ruin the time they spent together with pointless arguments and half hearted glares. 

“Can you at least turn around?” He says, defeated and worn out. Everything feels heavy, like his body’s just been dragged out of a thick swamp, his throat clogged with gunk and unshed tears. 

His dad turns without a word, rocking on his heels as he faces the door. They can distantly hear Morgan talking to someone on her phone, and Peter’s heart sinks. They’re so fucking _different_. 

“I really need to believe you, Pete.” He says, sudden and out of the blue. “We really need this.” 

Need. Not want. 

Peter doesn’t say anything, gently pouring Betty’s pee into the cup his dad had given him. He feels dirty, and uncomfortable, but it’s far better than risking Tony catching any drugs left in his system. 

“I don’t want to keep doing this every time you go out.” 

He goes silent after that, and Peter grinds his teeth together. His mouth opens slightly to say something, but it closes as quickly as it comes, and he’s left staring at a cup of piss that doesn’t belong to him through blurry eyes and a choked up throat. 

“Here.” he mumbles, prompting Tony to turn and take the cup from him. He shuffles on his feet, watching his dad drop two dipsticks into the cup, and they wait in a stuffy silence. 

Peter sways back on his feet and stuffs his hands into his pocket, stealing a glance at his father like it’s forbidden. He’s not shocked to see the blank expression on his face: he’d worn it since the day he’d overdosed and he could barely cover it when Morgan was around. Tony stares at the cup, numb and devoid of emotion, and Peter feels his heart lurch. 

Before he can open his mouth to speak, his dad’s reaching over the countertop and checking the dipsticks. He shakes the slightly, eyes scanning over the results like he already knows what’ll be on there. 

“Okay,” he sighs, and turns without another word. “You can go.” 

There’s a heavy numbness in Peter’s throat, weighing down on his lungs and right up through his trachea until he can hardly muster up the energy to breathe. It’s like a ball of nothingness that rises and rises and rises until it breaks and the emotions spill out into his throat and mouth like a spilt glass of water and he’s choking on it, and - 

“Dad?” 

Tony’s halfway out the door when he stops, rigid, and Peter bites his teeth together. 

What the _fuck_ was he thinking? 

He stands there, gaping like a fish as Tony looks at him expectantly, tired and worn out like he hasn’t slept a wink in the past four months. Peter’s throat lurches again, words bouncing around against his lips until he has no choice but to spill them out in a sickly sweet alphabet soup. 

“I love you.” 

The words feel jumbled, foreign in his own lips, and even Tony flinches a little. They’d barely been on speaking terms, even before his overdose, and Peter couldn’t recall the last time either of them had said the dreaded three words to each other. 

To Morgan, yeah, of course. They said it to her until it felt like a chore, a repetitive chorus drilled into her until there’s no way on this _fucking earth_ that she’s gonna forget it. 

His dad nods, stiff as a board but with eyes as wet as anything. The numbness in his face has thawed for the first time in such a fucking long time, and Peter smiles weakly at him. 

“Love you too, kid.” 

He doesn’t say anything else. He doesn’t need to. 

-

Perhaps the fact that Tony had even trusted him to come to this shitty party should give him a reason to stay sober tonight. Perhaps he should start taking this whole ‘responsibility thing’ a bit more seriously. 

You know. _With great power comes great responsibility. _

Peter blinks and digs the small, flat piece of metal in his hand into the vial he’s filled with crushed up coke. He brings it to his nose, keeps his eyes away from the mirror in front of him and snorts it like there’ll be no repercussions. 

He repeats the process once more, head still spinning from the alcohol he’d taken before he’d stumbled up the stairs to the bathroom. He’d crawled along the hallway like a dog, eyes squinted, body trembling. 

Withdrawal.

He looks into the mirror again, satisfied by the absence of a flinch. Running a hand through his hair, he fluffs the curls into a mess of brown locks, and blinks at himself. He barely looks real, his cheeks sunken, his eyes watery. When he leans in, sniffling, he wonders if he’s always had that little white mark under his nose.

His skin feels like plastic, like it belongs to him and it doesn’t all at once. He just feels wrong, and he leans forward onto his hands, pain spreading through his back. It’s gone as quick as it comes, but it doesn’t stop his stomach from lurching violently. 

He presses his lips together and shakes his head, the curls tumbling down into his eyes. It’s been so long since he’s had a haircut - he just can’t find the physical energy to drag himself to change his own appearance. It seems shallow. 

He takes a deep breath and leaves the bathroom, unable to look at his own face for much longer. There’s things going wrong now, things he can’t fix, not with molly, not with heroin. He’s starting to morph out, skin stretching longer than it should, mouth moving slower than it should.

Betty steps past him into the bathroom, and Peter watches her go, eyes squinted. She’s looking at him like he’s grown two extra heads, like he’s a freak she barely knows. His face doesn’t change, though, and he turns his back to where she’s disappeared behind the door. He swallows and tries to ignore the feeling that spreads through his chest when he doesn’t look back at him. 

He barely makes it four steps before he stumbles onto his knees, the room spinning around him in a blurred hurricane of sweaty teenagers and discarded clothes. He crawls forward, knees dragging and burning on the carpet, and tries to push himself into the wall, hands scrabbling frantically. 

Hands sticking to the wall, he crawls upwards rather than forwards, because it seems such an easier task. He pulls himself up the wall with ease, stumbling as he gets to his feet with a muffled groan. 

The hallway is spinning around him, but the people around him remain the same. They talk, they laugh, they make out. A lot of them are drunk, not many of them are high. From up here, they look like huge ants, and Peter giggles, and tilts. 

Oh. He’s now on the ceiling, stumbling forward towards the stairs, hands gripping out into the air like it’ll stop him from falling. The room’s hazy and blue and purple and he’s hot and tired but so alive, _so alive_. 

The room keeps spinning, spinning, spinning, spinning, till he can’t see, and he’s left stumbling blindly down the other wall like a, like a, like a -

Like a spider. 

Peter giggles, and giggles, until he’s coughing and letting the room lurch around him. He clings on tight to the wall, the room swinging and swinging like he’s lying on a hammock, the world moving too quickly for him to keep up. 

Peter winces and tries to push the choking thoughts out of his mind. Everything’s nothing and he’s so, so calm. It’s over before he can swallow, though, and he’s tumbling off the wall, stretching and reaching and clawing for anything, _anything_ to steady himself, fingertips itching to grasp those two seconds of nothingness, the two seconds he dreams of living in forever, the two seconds-

He lands with a thud next to the stairs, on his hands and knees just like how he’d started. His knees burn, and he winces when Betty passes him again without a second look. The music from the party below gets louder and louder until he can’t pretend he’s in those two seconds of nothingness anymore and he’s feeling, he’s feeling so much, too much and- 

So, yeah, okay, the rehab didn’t work. He hadn’t felt as good since before he overdosed, not even now, crouching by the stairs after having just literally walked on the fucking ceiling. He hears a voice downstairs, loud and obnoxious, and then everybody goes really fucking still, like, stiller than he’s ever really felt at such a vibrant party. Then he hears another voice, a voice he doesn’t recognise, worried, high and scared, and Peter takes a deep breath because-

He takes a deep breath, and steadies himself on the railing. Perhaps he’ll start to feel a little better after all. 


	4. i’m not saying i’m in love. but...

The stairs swim in Peter’s vision as he stumbles down them, one hand on the railing, the other clutching the vial of coke in his pocket. People loom around him, pushing into his vision and his personal space as he crashes into them. The noise from the kitchen hasn’t dulled, so he makes his way straight there, pushing past the crowd that has gathered at every entrance and around the corners. 

“You wanna fucking hurt me?” A voice says, angry and terrified. Peter raises his head, pushing into his tiptoes to see above people. 

There’s a boy stood in front of Brad, curly haired and wide eyed like a deer caught in headlights as the taller boy advances into him. His hands are on the tabletop behind him, fingers clutching the marble as Peter’s biggest rival glowers down on him. 

Peter and Brad had never gotten along. They hadn’t been friends-to-enemies, or any shit like that. They’d been hateful to each since the day Brad has poured milk into Peter’s hair on the third day of kindergarten. 

And he’d be totally lying if he said he wasn’t the tiniest bit jealous of Brad. MJ was the hottest girl at school, and Peter had lusted after her even after he decided he liked dick way more. 

“Come on then! You think you’re so fucking tough?” 

Peter’s vision takes another spin, and he watches through slitted eyes as the boy grabs a knife from behind him and turns it onto Brad. 

It glimmers in the party lights ahead of them, and even _Brad_ takes a step back. Brad, who had played football with a fractured ankle just to spite the rival team. 

“Come on!” He screams, forcing the crowd to collectively gasp and move backwards. “Come on!” 

“Woah, okay, chill-”

”You’re so fucking weird, right?” The boy shouts again, raising his arm high in the air. “You think you can hurt me?” 

And he pulls the knife down into his forearm, slicing through the skin and forcing blood to the surface and the crowd gasps and Brad looks sick and, yeah, Peter’s gonna _love_ this guy. 

-

It’s raining when he manages to stumble outside, taking a hit from a blunt at his left, rejecting heroin on his right. He’s following that boy like a lost puppy, panting and starry eyed as someone slips something in his jacket pocket with a wink. 

The boy’s tall, taller than Peter, at least, and the cut on his arm is covered by the yellow and black checkered shirt sleeves he pulls down against his palms. He’s hurrying to a small bike on the other side of the road, perfect, straight steps. 

“Hey!” Peter calls out, mouth moving before his brain can catch up. The boy turns, eyes blazing with fury and unshed tears, and Peter feels a pang in his heart. 

What’s he supposed to say now? What is he supposed to say, when he’s just watched this random guy cut himself through the arm with a kitchen knife? Peter’s unstable, but he’s never willingly brought a knife to his skin in front of a party of teenagers. 

“I, uh,” He stutters out, closing in to the bike the boy now has his hands on. “I liked, uh, what you did back there. No, I mean, it was cool. Not good.” 

The other boy looks at him, eyes narrowing slightly. He looks confused and out of place, completely sober yet so shaky that Peter wants to grab his hands and hold them still. 

“Yeah, I guess I just didn’t want...you know, a broken jaw or anything.” 

Peter nods, swallowing harshly against the dry walls of his throat. He’s not used to meeting new people, people he’d never seen before. People moved out of Queens - not into it. 

They don’t say anything else. Peter sways on his feet, cold and tired and dizzy. He wants to go home, needs to collapse onto a safe bed and cry himself to sleep, but the cocaine in his systems sticks to his blood vessels and clogs in his lungs until he can’t do anything but stare back at the boy. 

“I’m Peter.” He says, smiling into his cheeks. The vial of coke is itching in his pocket, but he can’t bring himself to reach for it. He’s not sure why. 

“I’m Harley.”

The party explodes around them, a flurry of light and sound and screams coming from inside the house. The excitement is draining, seeping out of the walls and into Peter’s limbs until he’s not sure he can stand anymore. 

“Where are you going?” 

“Home.” Harley says quickly, like he’d been expecting the question. 

“Oh,” Peter nods, rocking on his heels. “Can I...come with?” 

The taller boy is quiet for a moment before he nods slightly, a small smile creeping through the dimples in his cheeks. He nods again, more vigorously as Peter laughs awkwardly, and offers the bike towards him.

The rain lands on the tarmac beneath them as Harley pushes off, his feet pedalling slowly down the road. Peter keeps his head up for as long as possible, but the dizziness holds him tighter than he can handle, and doesn’t stop till his head’s resting on Harley’s shoulder. 

The streets are quiet, deserted and lonely as the rain spills around them. Peter’s soaked to the core, shaking and shuddering on top of the bike, but he only wraps his arms tighter around Harley and tries to ignore the dizzying pain in his head. 

The older boy’s crying, he can tell. His shoulders are shaking slightly, and there’s tear tracks on his cheeks when they finally reach his house and step into the porch. The light illuminates his swollen eyes, black marks like eyeliner running halfway down his cheeks. 

“You gotta be quiet,” He says as they sneak inside, discarding their soaked shoes at the door. “My mom’s asleep.” 

Peter nods silently and follows him up the soft carpeted stairs, taking in the smell of fresh laundry and clean floors. The walls are lined with framed photographs, pictures of Harley, pictures of what must be his mom, pictures of a small dog, pictures of things that must mean so much to this boy Peter barely knows. 

It feels intrusive, really, to be staring at the walls of a home to someone he doesn’t even know. He’d feel the same if anyone were to ever dare come round to his house. 

They stumble into the hallway and Peter falls into the wall, pressing his lips together to quiet the laugh that he so badly wants to let out. Harley turns to him and sniggers softly. 

In the light of the hallway, his eyes are gleaming and his teeth are gleaming and his skin is gleaming, and there’s this soft white aura around him that has Peter wondering if he really _is_ his guardian angel. 

“C’mon.” Harley giggles softly, slipping past a door with a finger on his lips. He pushes open the door at the end of the hallway, marked only with a single ‘H’, and motions for Peter to follow. 

They collapse forward into the room in a fit of hysteria, cold and shivering and intoxicated but home, in the dry, and the warm. Peter takes a moment to breathe in the scent of a room that doesn’t stink of weed or cigarettes, and almost jolts at the cleanliness of it all. 

They don’t talk for a long while, but Peter spots the blood sleeping through Harley’s sleeve, and takes his arm without another word. 

He doesn’t bother to tell him that the rubbing alcohol will hurt, because Harley flexes his arm to him and helps him clean around the bloody wound. 

It’s not bleeding too badly, despite being cut down through layers of skin, and nerves, exposed to the bacteria living on Brad’s knives. He cleans it quietly, looking up to smile reassuringly at Harley when the boy winces, and manages to bandage it up without it bleeding straight through. 

“You won’t need stitches,” Peter says as they fall back onto the bed, the high wearing off and leaving him a disorientated, exhausted mess. “You need to change the bandages, though.” 

His brain’s starting to hurt as the high drifts away from him. Instead of floating, he’s drowning, struggling harshly to hold on to the drug induced happiness he’d never get tired of. 

He reaches into his pocket, fingers brushing over a small bag that he doesn’t remember pocketing. He fingers around it, trying to see if he can remember what kind of pill it is, but he comes up short. He’s not sure what Harley thinks of drugs, but he’s about to find out. 

“I’ve got an idea.” He declares, and sits up straight, ignoring the spinning in his head. “I’m gonna get high.” 

Inside the bag are two small, circular pills, a kind Peter doesn’t recognise. They’re sealed tight, and he’s enough reason to believe they’re not shit. 

“What are they?” Harley asks and sits up too. His curly hair is still damp, but his eyes are dry and sparkling with the same excitement Peter had felt when he first got high. 

“No idea.” 

Harley grins, and stretches out his hand for one, closing it tight around the small pill. He rolls it between his index finger and his thumb, waiting for Peter to take his own and swallow it.

Peter’s been high a lot in his life. He’s had dizzying highs and exciting highs, terrifying highs and near-deathly highs. But there’s not a high in this world he’s ever experienced that comes close to Harley’s presence.

His eyes are glittering, and then his face is, too, all shimmering purple and illusionistic patterns. He’s swaying gently, head rolling from side to side as Peter leans closer to him.

Peter laughs gently, blinking slowly as the light ahead of them shines into his eyes. Harley reaches behind himself clumsily and switches it off, the only light coming from his gorgeous, puppy eyes. The glitter in them drips down his cheeks, overflowing in a kind of pure happiness that Peter’s never felt before. His heart spikes, and he falls against the bed in a lovesick haze. 

“I think I’m gonna love you.” 

Harley doesn’t answer, but he squeezes Peter’s hand softly and presses a gentle kiss on his cheek, and, okay, he’s _really_ gonna love this guy. 


	5. every time i feel good i think it’ll last forever

Back when Brad was a kid, he’d stumbled across his dad’s porn stash and watched every single video in the space of two hours. Porn of every kind, in every setting, but with a running theme that made his spine tingle. 

Boys. Young, teenage boys in every video. Boys dressed like girls. Boys dressed like boys. Boys dressed in nothing but a collar and a lead, walking on his hands and knees like the fucking puppy his dad never let their family get. 

Yet, it had never damaged his relationship with him. Sure, he hated the soul of the man he called a father, but he related to him in a way he’d never be able to with someone else. His father was a creep, yeah, but he was calculating and cool, controlled in the most violent of settings. He was everything Brad could have ever wanted to be. 

He hated his mother, too, so there wasn’t really anyone at home he’d had to talk to. She was weak and pathetic, and she never stood up to his father when he left five nights a week to go fuck some underage kids and it made him _sick_. 

The knowledge that his father was out there, on porn site upon porn site made his skin crawl, but not less than the knowledge that his mother just allowed herself to be walked all over. 

It was kind of ironic, really, because the first moment he met MJ, he’d had a hold on her like no other. 

They’d broken up a thousand times, and Peter had seen the girl crying underneath the football bleachers in her cheerleader uniform more times than he’d cared to count. Nonetheless, they’d gotten back together over and over again, and Peter was convinced they’d end up living in some sickly sweet haze in a white picket fence house and divorce like three times only to live a semi normal life together and maybe have some kind of shot at happiness. 

Right now, from where Peter’s sat on top of a lunch table waiting to go home and watching Brad glower at him as his hand rests on MJ’s lower back and his eyes travel towards where Harley is standing like a baby deer, he wants nothing less than to allow Brad to be happy. 

Harley waves at him from across the cafeteria, and Peter smiles back, all awkward and teethy as his eyes graze over the fresh bandage on the other boy’s left arm. There’s a little bandaid on top of it, pastel pink and matching with the straps of his backpack as he walks through the crowd of people towards Peter. 

“I don’t mean to turn it into a competition,” Harley starts as he reaches Peter. He holds out a hand and drags the smaller boy to his feet, pulling him along the corridor with his left arm swinging proudly. “But I kinda win.” 

Peter just smiles back, uncomfortable and hot yet giddy with happiness. Sure, he’d told his new best friend all about the overdose and the addiction and the rehab in a drug induced haze which probably wasn’t the best idea, but it’s also his first proper friendship since he first tried molly, and that’s gotta mean something. 

“What are you doing later?” Peter asks, shuffling his feet on the gravel as he waits for Harley to mount his own bike. His house isn’t too far from here, and he can guarantee his night’s gonna be one to fuck him up. 

“My mom’s making me eat dinner with her. Which, you know, is like the exact same every night, but she’s trying all these new recipes out. Most of them suck.” 

Peter laughs and starts pedalling down the side of the road, ignoring the tingling in his back when people in the passing cars stare a little too long. He’s used to people staring at him, but he’s not used to people staring at him _and_ Harley. That’s a whole new level of fucked up embarrassment that he’s not sure he can deal with. 

Nevertheless, he catches up with the taller boy when he passes him, laughing along at whatever stupid joke he spurts out next. In the short time that he’s known Harley, he’s come to understand the ways in which he works; the constant chattering, the scars on his arms, the unused disposable razors hidden in his bookshelf. He already feels like he knows the boy inside and out, right down to the core in a way that makes him want to shut down and hide. 

He hides it with a joke as they continue up the street, nearing closer and closer to the little street Peter lives up. He lives closer than Harley, and the distance he’ll have to bike alone is triggering a panic attack that’s been rising since the day started. 

“I’ll come round for dinner one day, okay?” Harley says with a smile as he stops where Peter’s street turns off. He waves his fingers, the long sleeves of his baby blue angel t-shirt riding up as he does so. Peter barely has time to stare at the scars before he’s gone, pedalling away quicker than Peter can blink. 

He wants to cry, because Harley only waved three times and now he’s gonna spend his whole night obsessing over the terrible things that might happen to him. He’s hyperventilating before he can catch himself, shaking and near tears as he gets off the bike and starts pushing it instead. 

He keeps to the right of it when he touches the first garage, and the left when he touches the second. He goes up and down and up and down and up and down until he’s touched each garage three times. That’s twenty four garages and three times, so he multiplies and relaxes outside his front door when he realises that it makes a perfect seventy two, which divides straight back into twenty four. It’s at least a little calming, but it’s getting dark and Harley hasn’t texted and now Peter’s getting _really_ on edge. 

“You staying for dinner tonight?” His dad asks when he walks in, in the middle of kicking off his tattered vans by the front door. He’s cooking some kind of noodle dish, all sizzle and spice floating throughout the kitchen. 

Morgan’s there too, sat at the kitchen table reading the book Peter brought her for Christmas a few years ago. It’s worn and tatty, but she still reads it over and over again. She’s wearing one of his hoodies, too, the black one he wore when he first got out of rehab, and Peter feels a stab in his heart. 

He wants to stay for dinner. He wants to stay and rekindle with his family and watch some stupid show and laugh until he cries and then cry some more until he’s so tired he can barely stand and his dad has to help him to bed, into his freshly washed sheets, and tuck him under like his mother used to do- 

Peter shakes his head and mumbles a quick ‘_no_’ before hurrying to his room, his heart so in pain that he feels numb. 

He goes straight for the top drawer underneath his window, throwing the mismatched pairs of socks onto the carpeted floor underneath him as he searches in a crazed frenzy. 

There’s a burning in his lungs, rising straight to a lump in his throat as he chokes back tears and tries his hardest to conjure up what he needs. 

There’s nothing there.

There’s nothing there, because the coke vial in his hoodie pocket was the last bit he had and he’d left it at Harley’s and now he’s stood in his room trying not to cry, his lungs burning and his heart hurting and _he’s got no fucking drugs_. 

He’s got no drugs and his mind’s reeling and he feels like he’s about to throw up in the middle of his bedroom, coat the carpeted floors in vomit like he’d done only four months ago and give in to the pull of a violent withdrawal. 

It’s a disaster. A full blown shit tip of a disaster at that, and he’s grabbing his jacket off the chair next to his bed before he can stop himself. 

It’s not that hard to get out of the house. The hard part is watching Morgan’s face fall as he chooses a petty high over their relationship. 

It’s still cloudy, the threat of rain hanging over his head as he bikes as quick as he can to Ned’s place, like it’s taunting his emotions and displaying them for the whole fucking town to see. 

Ned doesn’t live far away, but it’s far enough that by the time Peter’s pedalled his way right, left, up a small hill, left again and straight down a long road, his ankles are bruised from slipping on the foot grips, and his eyes are stinging as the pain in his stomach grows heavier. 

Him and Harley had spoken about the drugs, about how he’d gotten out of rehab, about how the overdose had actually _really fucking terrified him_, and about how when he’d sobered up, he’d felt no different in the excitement of a high than when he was sober with Harley. 

But of course he’s stood banging on Ned’s door, turning the handle because he knows the boy doesn’t leave it unlocked unless there’s a genuine reason and he’d figured out where the spare key was months ago, because the universe had decided Harley was busy and his brain was in overdrive with thoughts of his mom and- 

If the universe wants him to get high, who was he to deny it that? 

“I need drugs.” He whines out as he pushes through the doorway into Ned’s living room. The older boy is stood there, counting money on the little coffee table, and he glares as soon as Peter nears him. 

“This ain’t the time, Pete, you gotta go.” 

Peter ignores him, marching past the open kitchen to the back room, the few stairs leading to the room in his house he keeps all the drugs he sells. Peter’s only been in here a few times, because he had little to no self control and usually couldn’t afford everything he wanted. 

He gets to the doorway only to be stopped by Ned’s younger associate, a kid he never learned the name of with what he hopes is a fake tattoo underneath his left eye and a row of gold teeth hidden beneath his bottom lip. He’s stood with his arms crossed, and Peter can see the beginnings of packaging behind him before he gives him a deathly glare and slams the door shut. 

“C’mon, man, I just need some pills and a bit of coke. That’s all.” 

“Yo, Pete, I ain’t fucking around, okay? These dudes ain’t playing, you need to get the fuck out.” 

He ignores him again, the continuous threats floating after him as he makes his way into the main living room. Ned’s been cooking, and the odd mix of spice and soup and weed overwhelms him as he lays back on the couch. 

“Peter, I ain’t fucking playing, okay? You need to get the fuck out of here, right now.” 

“Give me drugs.” He says, closing his eyes as he kicks off his worn sneakers. 

Ned opens his mouth to say something, but the sound of a phone ringing interrupts any dialogue. Peeking over the top of the couch warily, Peter flicks his eyes between Ned and the phone, watching the other boy’s face change darkly. 

“I could fucking kill your right now.” He seethes, picking up a small walkie talkie from the kitchen counter. “He’s here.” 

There’s this certain look on his face that makes Peter sit back a little, makes him hide that much further into the pillows of the sofa. He’s never looked so serious, jaw set and eyes narrowed as he reaches into a gap in the cushion. 

He pulls out a small gun. Peter doesn’t know jack shit about guns, except that they fire bullets and Ned probably doesn’t have a licence to use it in the way he’s suggesting, but he knows this ain’t good. He tucks it into his waistband, covered by the shirt and jacket he wears over the top of his bare torso, and looks back up with an expression that holds so much finality that Peter almost regrets coming here in the first place.

“Sit here, don’t move, and shut up, okay? These dudes ain’t fucking about, Pete.” 

Peter nods, swallowing nervously around the growing lump in his throat. The way he says it makes his skin crawl, the promise of an unsaid threat looming over his head like a dangling sword. 

Ned watches him for a second longer before moving to open the door. The couch blocks half of his vision, but he can still see the left side of another man’s face, tattooed and pale and snarly as he talks to Ned. 

There’s not much going on besides the occasional twitch of Ned’s fingers, but he eventually nods silently and invites the men inside; Peter bites down on his lip and, yeah, now he _really_ fucking regrets coming here. 

The first man is the smallest, pale and bulky and tattooed on every inch of exposed skin that Peter can see. He’s smirking when he spots him on the sofa, small and nervous in the middle of the cushion as the other men follow him in. They look generally the same, both dark haired, both tan, but one is slightly taller and bulkier, his hand quite clearly resting on the holster of a gun. 

“You got my shit?” 

The man doesn’t answer Ned for a while, his eyes trained on the spot of the sofa Peter has cornered himself into. The other men are closer to him, one on either side of the couch, and he can feel the tension rolling off them in heavy waves. 

“Meth, coke, bud, molly, heroin, threw some LSD in there for the fun of it,” The man answers, his eyes never leaving Peter’s tense form. “You sure you don’t want nothing stronger?” 

“Nah I’m sure man.” Ned replies instantly, moving to stand between the small coffee table and the opposite sofa. He shuffles on his feet and takes a quick look towards where the gun is planted, barely making eye contact with Peter as he takes a seat. 

“You don’t want no fentanyl?” 

His tone is almost confused, a kind of pity filled confused he’s only ever heard a druggie use when people won’t get high with them. He sighs and makes a weird motion with his head, which signals one of the other man to stand behind him.

The seat next to Peter is suddenly occupied, and he wants to go fucking home. 

“You ever tried fentanyl, kid?” 

There’s no sarcastic comment biting at his lips. There’s no hidden annoyance he wants to express in any way, shape or form, so he presses his lips together and shakes his head, lifting a shoulder halfway in denial. 

The man doesn’t say anything else, but he reaches into his pocket and pops the lid off a small, fairy sized vial of a clear liquid. 

Now, Peter isn’t stupid. He knows what fentanyl is. He also knows how lethal the dosage is, and how his heart palpitates when he sees how much that tiny vial contains. He’s tried a lot of things, and he really was never expecting to add fentanyl to that list. 

Flicking open a gleaming pen knife, the man dips the razor sharp tip into the vial and pulls it out at a slant, a small dollop of the drug resting near the deadly end. It doesn’t _look_ like a lot, but neither did those pills he took four months ago, so, what does he know? 

As if Peter hadn’t known what was coming, he still gulps and tries to blink himself awake when the man raises the knife and positions it next to his lips. He can almost kind of pretend this is a nightmare, but the buzzing his skin is feeling from the almost-contact is too overwhelming for him to convince himself.

“Mouse, he don’t want-”

“Take it.”

Peter looks back down at the knife, and then back up at Ned. The other boy’s shaking his head slightly, his hand curled around the cushion of the sofa, fingertips resting right on the gun. 

He knows he shouldn’t take it. There’s this invisible line that he’s set himself; heroin, and no further. Fentanyl rests ahead of that line, completely off limits. 

But _fuck_ does it look good. 

He looks back up at the man again, studying the large patterned tattoo on his left cheek to distract himself from the eyes piercing into him. 

He leans forward when the knife is close enough to almost touch his lips and encloses them around the tip of the blade. He sucks the drug off with a worried glance to Ned, and releases it clean.

Peter knows the effects of an opioid overdose: chest pain, fainting, feeling like your lungs are caving in on you. He knows what an overdose looks like now, and he knows how dangerous taking fentanyl is. He also knows what it feels like to be choking on your own vomit while a bunch of professionals poke and prod you without sedative. He knows pain. 

But right now? It’s only bliss.

Pure, untouched, crystal fucking bliss. 


	6. but it doesn’t

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this has literally been pending for how fucking long i apologise greatly. 
> 
> i really struggled with this, wrote half of it stoned, deleted all of it, rewrote it, lost it, then wrote it again. sorry it’s a bit shit x

Peter’s pretty sure Harley’s pissed at him. 

In fact, he’s not _pretty sure_ Harley’s pissed at him. It’s a straight, cold, slap-in-the-face fact that Harley’s pissed at him. 

He doesn’t even look at him when they pass in the corridor the day after Ned had driven them both home with his head in Harley’s lap, the taller boy crying quietly. He keeps his eyes straight ahead, small specks of glitter Peter can’t remember seeing before glimmering on his left check as he blinks his way further past Peter’s lingering gaze. 

And he’s not known Harley for long, believe him, he knows, but there’s this invisible line attaching them at the heart strings, something so fragile that when Peter tries to ignore the growing ache in his chest, it only gets stronger and overpowers him until he can’t walk anymore or breathe or talk. 

He’s always been dependent, since he was a child and had to go alone to kindergarten because the hospital always needed his dad more, and he’d ached for the stability of someone needing him as much as he needed them since as long as he could remember. 

Harley’s like that, you see, because he _needs_ Peter, _wants_ him, unlike anyone has before. 

He doesn’t see Harley after second period. Maybe he goes home. Maybe he got lost in the maze of classrooms winding their way to the main hall. Maybe he’s purposefully avoiding him like the plague because Peter just can’t have one nice thing without fucking it to hell and back, can he? 

His next class is in the auditorium, and he regrets turning up even before it starts. His peers are sat in some misshaped order, Betty cross legged somewhere near the middle, and there’s his least favourite teacher, bustling with some papers over near the piano. 

He sits down quietly somewhere near the back, halfway to the middle but not at the edges. He covers his knees with his hoodie and throws up the hood and tries to pretend he doesn’t exist in this room full of living, breathing atoms. 

“Today we’ll be learning from experience how important sharing memories are when writing an autobiography.” The teacher starts, and Peter can feel her eyes on him before he looks up. “Each of you will come up and give a five minute talk of your favourite memory this summer. Any volunteers?” 

Nobody moves to talk first, of course they don’t, because they’re seventeen and it’s fucking awkward to stand in front of a class of people who wouldn’t care if you broke your own neck but, well, here they are. 

And Peter knows that teachers’ staring at him, can feel her gaze on his covered head when he tries to slump further into the floor, can hear her call his name before he has chance to leave the auditorium. 

“Peter? Can you start us off with something you did this summer?” 

He can’t. He’s sure he mentally can’t, but he’s sure he physically can’t too, because his head’s spinning and there’s this familiar nausea rising in his stomach, pushing up his throat with an intensity he can barely swallow down. 

He tries to ignore the fact that he feels like he’s going to throw up and hesitantly gets to his feet, fingertips fumbling on his knee high shorts to find the pockets of his hoodie. His phone’s there, enclosing the pills he stole from Ned’s before Mouse had turned up, hidden and _aching_ to be used. 

“I, uh-” He stutters when he gets to the stage, facing straight away from the large crowd as he does so. “I can’t really think of anything-”

“Just try.” The teacher interrupts and Peter runs his teeth over his bottom lip, again and again and again until the skin’s peeling off and he’s staring at a group of people he really should know better and he’s going to throw up. 

He wonders if everyone gets like this. If it’s an anxiety thing, or because he knows what he did this summer and it’s not something he wants to repeat. Maybe it’s both. 

Whatever the case, people are whispering and he can’t come up with bullshit on the spot because his brain’s still slow from the high last night, and he _really should have just stayed home. _

“I was with my, uh, my dad. And my sister.” 

He remembers the day like it was yesterday. The day before he overdosed they’d been driving home from Morgan’s book club with the windows down, not a cigarette in sight. He’d been fourteen days clean and the air was clean and warm on his arm as he waved it in the wind down the road. They’d been listening to AC/DC, because it was the only band they could ever agree on.

“We were listening to some music. And I, uh...” He trails off, breath stuttering. 

It had been fine, of course, and they’d gone home after grabbing three cheeseburgers, two without pickles, one with said pickles still intact because Morgan was the only one in the family who ever had the stomach for food so disgusting. 

He’d sat on the sofa and eaten the cheeseburger in front of the constant re-runs of Friends and tried to push away the knowledge that he was down to his last lousy pill, and that sooner or later he’d have to power through and either go cold turkey or find another dealer. 

Morgan had been happy, of course she had, because it was the first time he’d hung out with her without crying or screaming or throwing things around and staining the memories of the four walls they resided in. 

“I’m sorry, I can’t remember much so, I-”

He’s crying now, because he remembers the panic, the pure fear he’d felt when the tiny pill he’d left in a small bag in his sock drawer wasn’t there and he knew he’d left it there, couldn’t have put it anywhere else, and his heart had started stuttering like it was jump starting. 

He’d met Tony in the hall, and the screaming started before his brain had chance to catch up. 

“This is what we’re doing now?” He’d yelled, all scared and angry and hoarse like he’d been crying. “You’re hiding drugs in my fucking house?” 

The rage was something he hadn’t been expecting to feel. The pure anger he’d felt when he’d seen his dad holding the small bag like it was about to smash filled his veins with something so demonic he’d almost turned around and slit his own throat just to stop the word vomit that seemed to spill acid over his lips.

And it’d been physical, too, and he’d stood in the doorway crying while Tony yelled at him, and then he’d pushed past to leave and Tony had grabbed him and he’d pushed him off and thrown him into the wall and pulled the painting off the wall and watched it smash into a million tiny pieces at their feet and he hadn’t felt a thing. 

Nothing, not when Tony had stepped over the glass and grappled him to the floor, both of them screaming louder than words could form, a knife of pent up rage hanging between them, both ends pointing at each other. 

Nothing, not even when he’d grabbed a shard of glass and threatened his father with it with the full intentions of slicing his arm (_or his own_) into ribbons because he’d been so fucking angry but so, so empty, too. 

He takes a deep breath, stuttering out as he tries to form words to explain why he can’t breathe on this stage talking about something as simple as his summer. His classmates are staring, and smiling, and laughing, but he barely notices through the ringing in his ears. 

He’s sure Betty says something, something too quiet that he can’t make out but something so loud he has to step back, out of the light, and it finally sinks in where he is. 

On a stage, crying in front of classmates he’s known his whole life, not even twelve hours clean after an overdose which had left him in a coma for almost three days and almost killed him. 

He stutters on a sob and forces his feet to move off the stage, flying down the stairs and through the double exit doors like he’ll never see daylight again.

There’s this ringing in his ears, growing louder and louder until he can’t breathe, his lungs faltering like the air around him is polluted in a way only he knows why. He takes a left, then another left, and bursts through the door of the open disabled bathroom, too blind with panic to even think. 

He doesn't lock the door, but he slides forward in front of the toilet and tries to stop the vomit that he can feel crawling its way through his stomach. He fumbles around with the pills he’d pulled out of his phone case, and brings them to light in front of the bowl. 

Three pills of xanax. That’s all he’s got left; at least, he thinks that’s all he’s got left, because he didn’t go home yesterday and he’s too terrified to ever step foot in that house again. 

He stares at them a little longer, the urge to take them all out and swallow them at once just to cease the feeling so overwhelming that he opens it too quickly, too clumsily, and drops it right into the toilet at the same time someone knocks loudly on the bathroom door. 

“Peter, it’s Betty.” A small voice comes from the other side of the door, and he jolts back, away from where he’s crouched and into a standing position in the middle of the bathroom.

“Shit.” He mumbles, flushing the toilet with watery eyes that watch the only numbing he’s got left swirl down into the pipes. 

He tries to catch his breath, wiping at his eyes, and moves to unlock the door. 

Betty’s stood there, her green eyes wide as they look at him stood there with tear tracks staining his face and lips half bitten to death. 

“Are you okay?”

“You’re so fucking stupid, Betty. You know that, right?” He seethes, stepping out of the bathroom and pushing past her in the hopes that she’ll get the fact that he’s _pissed_. 

And he is, because those were his last pills and he’d dropped them but he really can’t face blaming himself for this one and she’s the only other person to come into contact with him right now. He glares at her, heart stuttering as he tries to slow his breathing, and attempts to find his grounding in the empty corridor they’re stood in. 

“I just came to check on you-”

“I don’t want-” He clenches his fists, trying to swallow down the rage that burns right at his core. “I don’t want you to fucking check on me.” 

He shakes his head, watching the way her head follows him as he turns this way and that way, pacing across the corridor like a caged animal. 

“What are you gonna do, anyway, why does it fucking matter? You gonna help me? You gonna give me some life advice?”

“I just wanted to see if you were okay. You’re like one of my best friends, Pete.” 

She’s got this look on her face, the same look Harley had worn last night when he stroked Peter’s hair as he lay drooling on the couch, the same tightening of her eyes that his dad had when he noticed the line of coke on his bedside table one night. 

None of it stops the pure anger seething through his veins, forcing its way into his adrenaline filled muscles and throwing his hands out in a form of exasperation. He cannot handle being sympathised, and the way she’s looking at him makes him want to never show his face again.

“What, because we were friends in the fucking third grade, in fucking _kindergarten_? Get a fucking grip.” 

“Are you gonna say the same thing when you come knocking on my door in three days asking me to piss in some cup your dad left you?” She pushes back, eyes filling with watery tears. “Sorry if I miss the old you.” 

She pushes straight past him, leaving the corridor, once again, empty and deserted. Peter takes a moment to brace himself against the wall and fists his hands into his hair, cursing under his breath. 

It’s not entirely Betty’s fault - in fact, it’s not Betty’s fault at all. His subconscious knows that, and so does his heart, but he wants so badly to blame someone else for the tumbling of his kingdom that he can’t help but despise Betty, who’s only ever tried to help him. 

She’s been there for him for a long time, and he’s been for her. She was there when he first tried oxytocin and almost had a panic attack in the middle of a parking lot at eleven thirty on a Wednesday. He was there for her when her sister, Cassie, left for some guy’s house and didn’t come back for almost a whole week. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen someone so ecstatic to see another. 

He shakes his head and tries to forget about that fact that he’s just cried in front of a shit load of pissy teenagers, and that his plans to bike home with Harley were demolished when he didn’t answer any of his texts. 

He tries to send another one, anyway, a quick ‘do you want to meet up later?’ that he hopes doesn’t come out as weird as he thinks, and attempts to stop the rapid beating of his heart. 

He gets like this a lot, anxious. He gets all stuttery and jittery and he can’t breathe until whatever it is making him anxious leaves his mind alone. It’s something that’s stuck with him since he was a child and too afraid to leave his mother’s hand for anything other than a quick bathroom break. 

He’s not expecting an answer, so he pockets the phone and tries to ignore the stinging pain his heart’s suffocating under. 

He misses Harley, as cliche as it is, and wants nothing more than for this to all be forgotten about under mountains of coke or soft blanket forts or litres of vodka or nights under Harley’s duvet. 

The thoughts don’t stop, as much as he prays them too, but they get louder until he wants to stop in the middle of the hallway and scream and cry until someone notices. 

Nobody does. He supposes it doesn’t matter, anyway, because he wouldn’t let them near him if they tried, but it’s the thought that counts. 

There’s nothing left for him here, so he picks himself up and takes a deep breath and prepares to leave the corridor and face the knowledge that Harley might not ever speak to him again. 

It’s easier than it sounds. Really.


	7. the world went quiet

There’s this mental institution about half a mile away from the outskirts of town with a stained brown picket fence and screams echoing through the airy basement straight into the streets that houses twenty four patients, all different, at any given time. 

At least, that’s how they told Peter it was. 

Harley had spent the better half of two years in there, stealing away at his childhood with every bland, shitty meal they force fed him. They’d said whatever they could about him; that he was crazy, that he was a nuisance, that there was no wonder his father left for milk and never came home again. They’d say pigs flew from the moon to earth, and he’d have believed it. 

He didn't like to speak about it, so nobody ever really understood what happened inside the hospital. He had a few scars littered on the insides of his wrist and a strange mark he played off as a birthmark on his neck, but nobody ever really knew for sure where they came from.

Peter could have a pretty good guess. He’d seen similar scars in rehab; scars of self mutilation and destruction, scars of pain and anguish. He pretended not to notice when Harley started trying to cover them with foundation. 

They’re the same scars he saw on his mother's thighs. He hadn't been old enough to understand and by the time he’d understood, everything had been too far gone. 

So, Harley had been a psych kid. Never gone to school, always hidden in the four walls of his white house because his mother was too afraid to let him out of her sight. 

He sometimes thinks that Harley reminds him of a recovered drug addict. He wonders if that’s what he’ll look like. 

Right now, Harley doesn’t look like a recovered drug addict. There’s little stars glued to the edges of his eyes and his lips are stained a pinkish red and his irises are slightly wet and he’s so fucking beautiful Peter’s sure he’s an actual angel sent from heaven. 

“Hi,” he says, nervous and choked because he doesn’t really deserve to be anywhere close to being in Harley’s presence. “Can I come in?” 

Harley swallows hard and looks up the stairs; from here, Peter can see a light on, illuminating the darkness of the stairs and the kitchen that it opens into. Harley’s house is tidy, a two-storied dream, and he has to brace himself from leaning in to smell a house that hasn’t been contaminated with nicotine. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, sure. Come in.” 

“Is your mom home?” Peter asks, stepping nervously into the open kitchen. He’s fumbling with the zip on his hoodie, pulling the sleeves down past his hands. It’s still a little damp from the bike here, but all he cares about now is the fact that Harley’s speaking to him again.

“She’s upstairs. Follow me.” 

Peter’s been in Harley’s house before, but never like this. They’d been on speaking terms, at least, but now? Now he’s not even sure they’re still friends.

The stairs are a cream carpeted colour, the same as the walls enclosing the house. Peter wonders how hard it is to keep them clean, but remembers the way Harley had spoken about the constant routine, the schedule he had to follow before he could even fall asleep. He remembers him speaking about it with such a burning intensity, like the OCD was clawing its way through his stomach and out his mouth and spilling into his life like ink.

They finally pass his mom’s closed door, and there’s no light filtering through it. He hadn’t even glanced at the clock before biking over as soon as possible, after his dad had finished lecturing him about smoking in the house, like he didn’t do the fucking same. It’s a joke, really. 

“I was about to sleep.” Harley comments, leading Peter into his room. The only light comes from the soft purple glow of the multicolour LED lights framing the walls of his room. His bed looks messy, as human as Peter’s seen it, and his throat closes up.   
  
“I, um-” he tries, struggling to breathe through his mouth. “I wanted to, um, apologise.” 

Harley just nods, his arms wrapped around his body like he’s trying to hold all his organs in. He looks thin, fragile, like tracing paper, and Peter wants to cry. 

“I’m sorry, I should-”

“I can’t watch you kill your self.” He says, his eyes glued to the floor. “I’m not trying to become best friends with someone who’s trying to kill themselves.” 

Peter breathes in, and out, trying to steady his overactive brain. He’d kinda guessed this was coming, that Harley would have been opposed to him using drugs in some kind of way, but he hadn’t been expecting it to come _this_ fucking quickly. 

He nods, and Harley relaxes slightly, shaking his head. 

“Do you promise you’ll try and quit?” 

When he looks up, his eyes are sparkling with unshed tears threatening to spill over his lash line. He looks damaged, and Peter wants to throw his arms around him and never ever let go. 

“Yeah,” he hurriedly accepts, not really processing what he’s agreeing to as he steps forward and wraps Harley into a hug. “Yeah, of course. 

Harley laughs gently, resting his chin on Peter’s shoulder. It fits a little awkward, because Harley has to slightly bend his knees to reach Peter’s height, but it works. It feels safe.

“I got something to show you.” 

He pulls Peter over to the bed by his fingertips, giggling as his socked foot slips on the way up. Peter watches him grab his phone, his eyes lit up with sparkles. The purple light illuminates the iridescent stars on his eyes, and Peter’s breath catches in his throat. 

He loves Harley so much he might die from it. He’s never seen anyone so perfect, so pretty, so gentle and gorgeous. There’s not a thing he wouldn’t do on this earth if it’d put even the finest smile on that boy’s face. 

“Remember I told you about the guy I was speaking to?”

Peter’s brain short wires. He remembers, vaguely, Harley mentioning some guy he’d met online, but had never really thought it important enough to remember. They’d been high, anyway, so it hadn’t really mattered too much. 

“He sent me a dick pic like ten minutes ago, and I’m trying to figure out what to say to him.” 

Harley looks at him with a wary intensity in his eyes, so Peter nods and gives him one of those small smiles that his dad always takes as happiness. He’s fluent in every aspect of his sexuality, but sitting here listening to the only person he’s ever felt truly comfortable around talk about someone else they’re falling in love with? That shit’s difficult. 

“Should I send him one back?”

“No.” Peter says, a little too quick. “That shit spreads like wildfire online.” 

Harley turns his nose up at that, but nods in agreement. He bites down on the side of his lip, and then looks up at Peter with twinkling eyes.

“I think I love him.” 

And suddenly, the world went quiet. 

Not in the way Peter knows. Not in the way Peter _likes_. The world goes so quiet he can hear himself screaming from a hundred miles away. His heart jumpstarts, his breath catches in his lungs, and his whole body aches like Harley’s just hit him with a fucking asteroid. 

“I don’t know,” Harley continues, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Peter’s whole world is crashing around him. “I don’t think I really love him. I suppose I’ve never met him. He’s just amazing.” 

Peter just nods, biting down into his lip. 

“I took all these pictures.” He says and shoves his phone into Peter’s hands. “Look.” 

There’s nothing he wouldn’t do for him. Remember?

So he swipes through picture after picture, each as beautiful as the last, commenting on the way Harley’s hair looks, the way his eyes glisten, the way his lips are, the way his very skin gleams in the soft blue light of the pictures. 

Harley watches him with his hands to his chest, mouth slightly open. He glances up every now and then to see him just staring at the phone like he’s willing it to come back to his fingertips.

There’s something in his chest, like a golf ball that won’t move. Harley’s so gorgeous, and all these pictures are being sent to someone that isn’t Peter. Somebody else is admiring the way his lips are, the way his skin is, the way his eyes are. Somebody else is probably jacking off to each and every picture like some perverse sicko and then Harley’s life’ll get ruined and then he’ll have to move and Peter will never ever see him again and he can’t just let this happen, can he?

“I gotta get going.” Peter says after a while, handing the phone back to Harley. “Just noticed the time.” 

“Oh.” Harley says, but his eyes stay glued to his phone. “I’ll text you.” 

Peter just nods and grabs the jacket he’s discarded on the floor beside Harley’s bed. He turns at the doorway, only to find Harley’s eyes still flicking across his screen. It’s like a stab to his heart, so he leaves quickly and tries not to scream in the middle of his hallway. 

He pushes his hair back with both of his hands, eyes wet as he does. The stairs seem to go on forever, tilting and falling away from him as he descends them. 

He’s about to leave. Really. It’s not like he planned to trip at the bottom of the stairs and catch his eye on the bottle of pills on the edge of the kitchen counter. 

Stealing isn’t below him, and he’d had enough practice to know how to keep it less suspicious. But stealing from _Harley_? That’s something else. 

He thinks of the boy Harley speaks to, of their conversations, of his dick, and grabs the bottle. He tips it into his palm, heart pounding in his ears and leaves five lying in the bottom of the white bottle. He’d taken four, and they sit in his hand like they’re taunting him. 

He shoves them in his pocket and leaves the house before he can cause it anymore damage. His presence seems to leave a stain, everywhere he goes. 


	8. unsettling safety

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i miss writing the first chapter for this 👼

Peter had never downloaded a dating app in his entire life. He’d barely ever had a relationship, let alone thrown himself into the sea of dating that only seemed to stem online and end in unsolicited dick pics and arguments.

He’d never really been curious, even. Why would he? What old country men and horny teenagers did online didn’t concern him much. He could suffer under the weight of a heavy high while they met with other girls and boys they’d never see again. It just worked that way. 

So, Peter had never been interested in dating apps. Until now. 

He wanted to see the pull, the addiction, needed to put a reason to the facade of Harley’s eyes constantly glued to this _stupid fucking app_. If Harley could have so much fun on his stupid phone, Peter could learn to like it, too.

Right now, at least, he’s texting again, because of _course_ he is, because he barely looks up from his phone to speak to Peter anymore, and they have to take regular breaks on their rides home so Harley can check his messages, and they can't hang out in Peter's bedroom anymore without him sending pictures and giggling and having fun while Peter sits alone in the corner of his _own fucking room_ and tries not to cry.

It’s exhausting. Peter had given him the silent treatment the whole of lunch one time and he hadn’t batted a fucking eyelid. Despite how exhausting it is trying to keep up with their friendship while Harley's obliviousness lets it settle to ash, he reminds himself that it’s just some stupid crush, something pathetic that won’t go any further than this. Peter settles his brain at night on the basis that he’ll get bored one day and they’ll stop speaking all the fucking time, and he'll finally have time to hang out properly with him again.

“We’re gonna meet. Tonight.”

Peter looks up from the ham roll he’d been picking at with his fingertips to see Harley standing above him, phone locked in one hand, the other perching on the table.

“Hello to you too.” 

Harley rolls his eyes and sits down, the feathers dangling from his ears ruffling at the movement. He looks perfect, like he always does, but today in a way that makes him look almost softly feminine. Peter’s sexuality is a grey area, but he decides that he _very_ much likes this. 

“Hello. Anyway. I told him where I live, turns out he lives, like, ten minutes away! Isn’t that crazy?” 

Peter just watches him for a second, too distracted by the glitter highlighting his cheekbones, too lost in the way his lips shine wet under the dim lights of the cafeteria. He’s so pretty it almost chokes the words out of Peter's throat.

“Yeah, you-what? You told him where you live?” 

“Only the town.” Harley answers, rolling his eyes with a little laugh. He shakes it off, but Peter can feel that familiar fluttering in his chest, the breath thinning in his throat. The room starts spinning, slowly at first but suddenly faster, faster, faster. 

“Hey,” he says, and this time it’s softer, more like the Harley he met at the party all that time ago. “I’m gonna be okay.” 

His thumb is rubbing gently over Peter’s knuckles, gentler than he's been in such a long time that Peter almost cries just at the feeling. Harley’s fine, of course he is, he's right here, but there’s so many things that could happen and if he dies, Peter won’t survive. He won't, he won't, he won't-

But he looks at the pure happiness in Harley’s eyes, the way the hazel glow of them twinkles, and he just can’t bring himself to protest any further. 

"So where are you meeting?"

"Well," Harley starts, and now he looks happier, looking directly into Peter's eyes to hold his attention. It's a lot harder to concentrate on his words when his fingers are still gripped around Peter's hands. "There's this carnival tonight, I heard MJ and Brad talking about it earlier."

Harley makes a face and Peter laughs. He'd known MJ for a long time and knew how much Brad had influenced every fiber of her being. He never bothered himself liking, or not liking people, but he made an exception to Brad. He's not sure he could not like someone more if he tried.

"So..." Harley says and raises an eyebrow.

"So what?"

"Will you come?" 

Peter looks down at the phone in Harley's hand as it vibrates, and for the first time since they'd started talking, Harley doesn't look down. 

"Okay." He says, and only partly because he knows Ned'll be there. "Yeah, okay. I'll be there."

Harley watches him a little longer, side eyeing him in a way that makes Peter squirm. Compared to Harley's grey sweatpants that Peter now thinks is his favourite piece of clothing to ever exist, his own baggy maroon pants and unzipped hoodie looks kind of mundane. 

"Why are you looking at me like that?" He laughs nervously, eyes flitting back to the table. Twenty three grains of salt left on the table from somebody who didn't know how to clean stare back at him.

Harley shakes his head and smiles, all perfect teeth and crinkled eyes. Peter doesn't think there's a thing on this earth that compares to the way Harley's smile looks.

Except maybe fentanyl.

Peter shakes his head and watches Harley as he leaves through the double doors to the cafeteria, fingertips moving across the screen of his phone quickly, talking to his online love in more depth than he'll ever do to Peter.

-

As it turns out, Peter’s never been to a carnival.   
  
He remembers there being one, of course; it had passed through his town a couple autumn’s ago. Morgan had begged and begged to go and his dad eventually agreed on the basis she had friends to go with. He didn’t say, but Peter knows it’s because rides make him nauseous. 

They’d invited Peter to go, but he’d instead spent his night getting high on the pills one of his old dealers had given him. He doesn’t know whether it was a bad batch or something fucked in his brain, but he spent the whole night talking to the monster under his bed as he hid from the walls crawling with leeches around him. He never brought off that dealer again.

“Morgan?” Peter says, jumping at the sight of her in the hallway. He’s stood in his room, door wide open, clothes strewn around the floor. Maybe she’ll have better fashion advice than his own brain. 

She turns with a hum, her eyes looking to the right where he knows Tony is. He’s always there, always waiting for Peter to slip up and fuck everything to shit again. He wants to feel like something other than an antagonist in his own home. 

“The carnival.” He says, and takes a deep breath. He can’t remember the last time he and Morgan spoke properly. “What do I wear?” 

There’s a little smile on Morgan’s face as she approaches his door, wrinkling her nose only slightly at the stench of old weed and suffocating tears. It’s little, but it’s enough that it’s there. 

“You cannot wear that negative electron t-shirt, that’s for sure.” 

Peter looks down at his shirt. He used to excel at chemistry before he stopped giving a shit about anything other than when his next high would be. Tony had brought the stupid t-shirt as a joke when he came first in the science fair. That was when they used to have a somewhat healthy relationship. 

“What about this?” Morgan says, and throws a long coat at him. It’s beige, crinkled, and looks like it hasn’t seen sunlight in three years, but he nods nonetheless. 

“And this.” She throws a cropped sheer top at him and some high waisted shorts in a fashion that makes him wonder if he has any choice in what he wears tonight. 

“I’m not sure, Morg,” He starts, looking at the sheerness and the shortness and the very look of an outfit thought out and put together. “It’s-”

“No buts.” She says, and motions are the coat. “You have that to cover it. You should probably get it ironed.” 

She winks at him and leaves for her own room, taking her aura of joy with her. Peter stands, alone, in a pile of clothes and an outfit laid on the bed and thinks, _can I do this?_

Because it’s not just ironing his clothes. He never learnt to because he was never here. He spent half his junior year high and ever since then, his dad just ironed his clothes for him. It was never a big deal because never of them wanted to speak to each other. 

Except now, it seems, it kinda is, because Harley’s texting him about this new guy and how he’s leaving soon and Ned’s telling him Betty’ll be there and not to worry, and Morgan’s playing music and singing and it’s sounds happy but it’s not it’s really not. 

He takes a deep breath and picks up the coat. It’s soft and warm, with a belt that’ll cover as much as he wants. Peter thinks of his dad suddenly, of the warmth of his own coats, so similar to the one he’s holding, and suddenly wants to cry. There’s a whole life he could have had and he’ll never get it, ever. 

The paintings hanging in the hallway are still mismatched, still broken in places just like Peter had left it last summer. He winces and steps over a patch in the carpet where he’d spilled ink running from his room. He doesn’t remember why, just that he’d cried about it so hard he threw up. 

His dad is in the kitchen, making some kind of pasta that only he’ll eat. He never stopped home cooking, and it was one of the things that made their little cheap bungalow feel more like a proper home. 

“Dad?” He says, swallowing down that lump in his throat that seems permanently attached. 

Tony hums in response, not taking his eyes off the pasta, but his body language is tight and jumpy all of a sudden. Peter thinks it must be the bad vibes he seems to radiate. 

“Can you iron this for me? Please.” 

His dad looks up in shock, softening his eyes immediately when he spots the way Peter’s fingers are clenched so hard around the fabric they’re turning white. It seems like the anxiety is running through his veins in place of blood, and all he is is a sweating, shivering, anxious little mess.

“Of course,” he says, pasta immediately forgotten. “Of course, Pete. Here.”

Peter thinks he doesn’t deserve the kindness of his dad. 

He hands him the coat wordlessly, still shaking. He just doesn’t want it to blow up, every time they speak it blows up and it erupts and it hurts and it breaks their relationship even more and it’s basically shattered already and-

“Hey,” his dad says, jolting him out of the anxiety attack. He doesn’t lift his eyes, but Peter knows he can hear the hyperventilating. “Remember your breathing exercises.”

Peter also thinks his breathing exercises are bullshit, but he’ll never tell his dad that. Instead, he breathes in, in through the nose, out through the mouth, some false understanding of an exercise he’ll never be able to figure out. 

“Dad, I-”

“Enjoy your carnival.” He says warmly, passing the coat back to Peter’s possession. “Don’t push yourself, Pete.” 

He knows he’s talking about the carnival, but some of it rings true for right now, too. He’s trying so hard to mend their broken relationship that sometimes he tries too hard and it just gets them nowhere. 

“I will.”

And he turns back to the pasta with a smile, his back to Peter as he makes his way into the kitchen, and Morgan’s there, just in the doorway, a little smirk on her face and her hair freshly straightened. 

“You’re welcome.”


	9. cry from my eyes to my feet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> YOOO this shit took SO long i’m so sorry. quarantine’s been hard & i relapsed a few times so i didn’t really have the energy to continue this but the story should start looking up from here 😢

“It’s like a fucking eighties movie.” 

The carnival is thriving, crawling over itself with teenagers and children and adults. Every ride is working, looming ahead and on top of Peter as he walks through one of the entrances, letting Morgan pay for both of them because their dad had offered the money to her. He hadn’t looked at Peter, but he’d smiled when he pressed it into her hand and assured her it was for the both of them. Peter had been too afraid to leave his room, but he’d felt a swell in his heart nonetheless. 

“I’m gonna stay with you.” Morgan says, her brown hair, the same shade Peter’s sure his is, tied on top of her head. “Til you find your friends.” 

“I _am_ meeting someone, Morg,” he says, frowning at her from the side. “He’s just a bit late.” 

Morgan hums, but she doesn’t argue again. She leads him through the crowds of people, past a group of younger teens who wave at her, and into the larger bit of grass that opens to a circle of five of the biggest rides. 

“I think it’s weird,” she says, and Peter looks back at her. “Why you’d want to spend half the ride upside down.” 

Peter looks up at the swing stuck halfway at the top, dangling it’s inhabitants from the cart. It swings down, leaving a trail of terrified screams, and Peter smiles. Rides had never irked him in the way they had Morgan and his dad - they seemed much happier to keep their feet on the ground and their head the right way up. 

It’s all red and pink and swirling around his head, past the iridescent glitter Morgan had thrown onto his cheekbones as they left the house, burying itself in his brain with smells and sights and an environment so alive that Peter feels a breath of fresh air even through the stench of weed and tobacco.

“Hey, Morg...” Peter starts, only to turn to see Morgan running to a group of girls stood slightly to the left of the carousel. 

“Where are you?” He mumbles, leaving her to speak with her friends. She won’t say it, but Peter knows she’s watching him so he doesn’t have an episode and go crazy again.

Peter’s never been able to control his emotions. Ever since he was a child, they’d overrun him, the unbearable anxiety perfectly bordering his desperate need for attention and uncontrollable urge to fidget. Sometimes, when the emotions got too heavy, he’d slink into a depression pit, barely able to breathe or blink or move. Other times, he’d be so ecstatic the mania would walk him to the top of the highest bridge and make him waltz along the edges until someone came and found him.

So, it’s probably not in his best interest if he goes wandering off, and he knows he’ll get an earful off his dad when he gets back, but the urge to see Harley is greater than any punishment he could be given for it. He pushes it to the back of his mind and focuses on weaving between groups of people, ignoring the intoxicating smell of weed from somewhere to his right.

“Peter!” A voice shouts from somewhere behind him, instantly recognisable. Peter turns, wide eyed, heart beating faster as his eyes lock on Harley’s.

_Fuck_.

He enjoyed the glitter on Harley’s cheekbones that one day at school, the pleasantry of ignoring masculine callings weaved into his aura. He’d looked gorgeous, like he was all soft and pretty but would still hold Peter under his arms if he could. 

But this? This is something else.

Harley walks towards him, lips in a grin as he extends his arms towards Peter. He’s wearing dark jeans and a graphic t-shirt with clumsy black boots, but it’s the chains that Peter’s drawn to. 

He’s accessorised well, his face devoid of makeup besides a tint of Vaseline on his lips. There’s a chain necklace around his neck, rings covering almost each of his fingers, and his knuckles look dusty in the way they would a few days after a fight, and the outfit is so simplistic, so easy, but there’s just something about it that makes Peter want to die right there and then so it can be the last thing he sees.

Harley meets him in a hug that smells of pumpkin and candy floss. Peter rests his chin on the taller boy’s left shoulder, breathing and hoping the scent stays there for as long as he lives because nothing can ever be as good as this. 

He pulls back, eyes flirting over every crease and corner of Harley’s face. It’s so perfect, so quiet that if they hadn’t been in the middle of a carnival with his little sister staring directly at them, he’d have kissed him and never let go. 

“Sorry I’m late.” He says, a little breathless. “I went for the simple look, didn’t want to scare him away. What do you think?” 

He’s all smiles and teeth and radiates happiness like it’s glowing from his very heart and Peter can’t bring himself to start crying there and then because _of course _he’s dressed up for mystery boy. 

“You look good.” He says, and that’s that. 

Harley smiles, satisfied, and turns to the rest of the carnival at Peter’s side.

“You do too. I love the glitter. You like rides?” He says, pulling at Peter’s fingers towards a spinning object with three prongs holding a carriage each.

Peter just nods, smile widening as Harley mocks him and pulls at his hands towards the ride. 

“Come on, you’ll love it.” He says, all wide eyed and smiling teeth and pretty freckles and Peter thinks, yeah, maybe he will.

*

“Where are you?” Harley mutters to himself, rechecking the lock screen for what’s got to be the fiftieth time in a minute.

Lewis had told him he’d meet him here, and here was where Harley had stood for the past fifteen minutes. Right by the tree to the left of the green bench, halfway down the path to the canal. He sighs and looks this way and that, right down to the bottom of the canal and back again before his eyes settle on a figure straight ahead of him.

The anxiety eases from his chest as soon as he sees him, six foot three at least and built like a fucking god. He didn’t usually care whether he topped or bottomed but he’s sure he’d have a preference with Lewis.

“I’ve been waiting for like, ever.” He laughs, curling his hands into his torso. He’d left Peter at the carnival near his sister along with his jacket, because his smaller friend had been shivering the whole time. He looks at the car parked behind the figure and wonders how he hadn’t heard it approach.

“How are you?” He tries again, bothered by the receiving silence. The figure presses forward, walking collectedly until he reaches the illuminating light.

And it’s not Lewis.

In fact, it’s _Brad fucking Davis_, quarterback of the football team, the same guy who screamed at Harley at the very first party he attended in this stupid town. His breath hitches at the sight of him holding a phone, Lewis’s profile open on the screen.

“No,” Harley says, already walking away. “No, no, no.”

“Hey, wait!” Brad says, jogging a little to catch up as Harley sets his sights on the illuminated canal path. “Wait, wait, stop. Let me explain.”

“Explain what?” Harley spits, hands shaking. “That you lied to me? Who the fuck do you think you are, Brad?”

Brad’s eyes flash, his nose quirking upward in a little tic as he swallows. Harley had heard all the stories Peter had told him about how he treated MJ; about the controlling, the anger, the phone hacking, everything. He’d told him Brad was a psycho and he’d believed him.

But now he’s not so sure.

“Listen, I know I - I know I fucked up. But you’re all I’ve thought about the past few weeks.”

He says it softly, as softly as he can with a deep voice and so much testosterone running through his veins that it makes Harley flinch. He stands his ground though, trying to keep still as Brad continues advancing towards him.

“I’ve woken up to you, I’ve gone to sleep thinking of you. I know almost everything about you, you know? You know everything about _me_.”

“You have a _girlfriend_.” Harley says, staring at Brad as he clamps a hand onto his upper arm. “Please let go of me.”

He does, only to step back and hold himself so tall that Harley has to look up just to catch his eye. He looks strong, too strong, the kind of strong that’d crush you if you focussed on it too long.

“You’re a fucking whore.” He says and then that’s it. 

It’s like, even though it was Brad’s face, it was Lewis speaking. It was almost like he’d been the one to see the _real_ Brad, to tap into a soul that seemed so unbreakable on the exterior. They could’ve made it work, eventually.

But not now.

“You’re sixteen, right? So you know you technically distributed child pornography from the confinements of your bedroom _and_ on school property.”

“Over the past three weeks I’ve compiled a folder of every picture and video you sent to Lewis.” He continues, voice too calm to match the way he’s looming above Harley like he’ll crush him at any moment. “And I can send them all anonymously to the police with just the click of a button.”

Harley swallows. There’s no bluff in the words. He knows that given even half the chance, Brad’d do something as inhumane as that just to ruin his life, and the thought brings bile to his throat. 

“Why?” Harley’s voice breaks. He tries to swallow the tears back, harshly working it back down his throat so he doesn’t throw up down his own shirt.

Brad shrugs, but he doesn’t answer.

“I don’t see how anyone can trust you.” He says after a long pause, his brown eyes looking near black in the night. “You can’t even trust yourself. Look at yourself. You’re so insecure it’s basically pouring out of you.”

Harley just glares, ignoring the tears pricking at his eyes. He feels like his whole world is crumbling around him and he hates Brad and he hates this school and he hates this goddamn fucking town and everyone in it.

He thinks of Peter and chokes back the tears, ignoring the second nature thoughts of violent suicide.

“So keep your head down. Keep your mouth shut, and stay out of my way.”  
  
He cocks his head with a small smirk, barely there but snarling enough that it makes Harley’s heart jump. He grits his teeth together, remembering a time he wasn’t deathly afraid of everything and anything and watched Brad turn.

“You know what I think?” He starts, and then the words are tumbling out of his mouth and he can’t stop no matter how hard he tries to bite his tongue. “I think you’re a fucking faggot, and I bet even MJ knows.” 

Brad turns immediately, his right hand moving so quick that Harley can’t even flinch away from it as it tangles itself in his hair and pulls. He yanks his head back, so close that Harley can smell the sickly sweetness of the mint in his breath, can see the deathly blackness of his eyes. He tries to keep up the glare, but it’s hard with the pain pulling at his scalp.

Brad stares at him for a long time, his jaw grinding together so loud Harley can hear it. His eyes flick between Harley’s own, no emotion showing. It’s unnerving, the way he looks like there’s no soul inside his body.

“You have a nice night.” He says, and turns with a smile that’s too sweet to be kind. Harley moves a hand to his head subconsciously and lets out a shaky breath, the canal still flowing gently behind him.

Holy fuck.

He pulls at his phone, the screen lighting up with an unseen text. It’s Peter, telling him he’s going home with Morgan, that he cares for him but this is too important. Harley feels his chest pang and he thinks of leaving his only friend at a carnival all by himself while he’s recovering, in a town run by criminals and drugs.

He takes another breath and stares at the screen, his fingers hovering over the keyboard. What the hell does he say? ‘_Oh, hey, Pete, sorry I left you all alone at a random carnival to meet some guy, turns out he wasn’t even real and instead decided to blackmail and threaten me_!’ He’s sure Peter would jump across the moon if it meant getting to him quicker.

Sighing, he pockets the phone again, deciding neutrally on making his way to Peter’s house without causing panic. He can breakdown when he’s there, when Peter knows he’s safe, he decides. No time for emotions in the cold, empty streets in October, even though the tears are already pouring and his body’s shaking and his lungs are burning and he’s choking on air trying to fill them, trying to stop the never ending stream of pain pouring from his body. 

_Fuck_.


End file.
